Jiménez Deredia was born in Heredia, Costa Rica on 4th October 1954. He started working as a sculptor in the seventies.
He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara and then attended the faculty of Architecture at Florence University from 1980 to 1986.
His intuition of a globalising vision of being and the universe were strengthened thanks to his retrieval of the conceptualisation of the pre-Columbian spheres of the ancient Boruca from Costa Rica. Those mysterious artefacts moved the sculptor to study both the shape and material used, as well as the function and symbology connected to the sphere and the circle.
In 1985, he composed the first Genesis, works of art depicting distinct periods of mutation of matter in space and over time, and laid the foundation for the creation of his artistic ideology, Transmutational Symbolism. He participated in the 1988, 1993 and 1999 Venice Art Biennials.
For the Great Jubilee in 2000, Deredia placed a monumental sculpture in a niche of Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. The Costa Rican’s sculpture is now housed in the niche that was designed between 1544 and 1564 by Michelangelo Buonarroti. Deredia became the first non-European artist represented at the Christian hub.
In 2006, after a personal exhibition held in Florence, he received the nomination for Correspondent Academician of Sculptor Class by the Florentine Academy of Art and Design. The history of this important Academy includes nominations of academics such as Michelangelo Buonarroti, Tiziano, Tintoretto, Palladio and Galileo Galilei.
In 2009, Deredia held an important personal exhibition in the city of Rome. On this occasion, the Fori Romani opened its doors for the first time in history to contemporary art.
In 43 years of activity, this unique artist and Latin-American thinker has created monumental works for museums and public places in Europe, Asia, the United States of America and Latin America, as well as participating in 50 personal, and more than 100 collective.
